I thought, “OK, I’m stumped, I’ll turn to the ‘plot design’ section of my dnd.txt file.” What’d I find there? The campaign stat block, starting out “Why is this plot fun?” Well, the instant answer to that is “Because the PCs get to fight as gladiators in the Bleak Theater.” And then it all fell into place! Ulrik is giving up slaving so that he can sell the Impresario gladiators instead! He’s going to be capturing monsters and adventurers, all while keeping his promise to the PCs. And hopefully they will end up in the arena eventually.

Anyway, just looking at things from that perspective — “Why is this fun?” instead of “What would logically happen?” changed my prep feeling from drudge to excitement. Thanks for that!

Thanks for letting me know about the broken Google Doc. I’m not sure what the problem was. I republished it, but no luck, so I downloaded it and posted a PDf and RTF version above.

I will be posting a block or two from my campaign when I get back from holidays. Stay tuned.

Plot Name RETURN OF THE RUSTY KNIVES

Synopsis: The bandits who raised Lorian and got him thrown in prison want his help – and they’ll hold his farm hostage. Their plan is to rescue the other bandits from prison during the harvest festival, then try again to take Grand Count Ismae hostage.

Why is this plot fun? He’ll get to tell them to go **** themselves, eventually.

Adversaries

Name
Balkor, ranger
Frolan (“my idiot step-brother, here”, but he actually says wiser things.) druid (shillelagh, magic stone, tree shape)

Goals
Rescue bandits from prison, capture count

Resources
Threaten award winning pumpkin

Notable Elements

NPCs:
Count Ismae (gazetteer 20)

After that I got inspired and started making up names, personalities, and spell lists for the NPCs, so I didn’t finish the block. My timeline was supposed to go “bandits use Lorian’s prize pumpkin to smuggle weapons into the city, then break their fellow bandits out of jail, then try to assassinate the Count,” but what actually happened was that they came to threaten the PCs first, there was an epic roleplaying encounter where the other PCs stood up for Lorian and created a standoff by threatening to crush an elemental gem, and the Rusty Knives relinquished their knives and went back to the countryside. I’m not sure whether I would have thought of putting that as one of the end conditions or not!

I’ll definitely try using your stat block again next plot I start, and try not to get distracted this time. It would be cool if you posted an example plot to show how much detail you put into imagining end conditions.

The Google Doc you posted isn’t working for me any more, but I copy and pasted it. I notice you discuss “plot twists” in this post but there is no separate box in the stat block for it. I thought that was an important box because I want put Ars Ludi’s revelations in there.

Your first example of fun is a great one. At least you’ll know one player will enjoy it. :)

- A series of encounters with aberrations, giving the group a variety of tough and crazy monsters to defeat.

- At least one item from each player’s wishlist. Plus two PCs backstories are heavily involved. Bill the shy player gets a couple one-on-ones if I successfully get him separated.

- Exploration of an outer plane for the first time for the group, plus an old villain makes a surprise recurrence.

It depends entirely on what your group finds fun, plus universla fun elements like a great villain or a cool story emerging.